Elinor Greenberg

Elinor "Ellie" Miller Greenberg (November 13, 1932 – September 15, 2021 ) was an American author educationalist and speech pathologist, an expert in the field of adult education and experiential learning, as well as a former civil rights activist. She saw access to education as a social justice issue, and spent over thirty years creating higher education programs for non-traditional students. She headed the University Without Walls program in the 1970s; created a weekend BSN program for nurses in rural Colorado; established a degree program for Colorado prison inmates and ex-offenders; and established online master's degree programs for nurses in the 1990s. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2010.

Personal life and education

She was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1932, and grew up in New Jersey. Her ancestors were Ukrainian Jewish refugees who emigrated to the United States in the early 20th century. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1953 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Speech and Psychology, and earned a Master of Arts degree in Speech Pathology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1954.

In the mid-1950s, she moved to Littleton, Colorado to take her first professional job as a speech therapist, where she then met and married her late husband, Manny. They had three children and four grandchildren together. Ellie was active in the local community, having co-founded the Littleton Council for Human Relations, which campaigned for fair housing legislation and brought Martin Luther King Jr., to Littleton in 1964. Over the years she continued her studies at the University of Northern Colorado and received her Doctor of Education degree in 1981. She was regional coordinator for the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, and the founding director of Project Leadership, which provided leadership research and training for the boards of nonprofit organizations.

Honors and awards

Greenberg received numerous honors and awards over the years. The following is a partial list.

Colorado Women's Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Achievement Award, 2014 Wilma J. Webb Founders Award, 2014 Induction into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame, 2010 Colorado MESA Service Award, 2006, 2007 Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Service Award, Arapahoe Community College, 2003. Founding Mother Award, Colorado Women's Leadership Coalition, 1997 Valuing Women's Work Award - Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, 1995 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Professional School of Psychology (CA), 1987 Honorary Doctor of Letters, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College (IN), 1983 Minoru Yasui Community Volunteer Award; Proclamation of Elinor Miller Greenberg Day in Denver by Mayor Wellington Webb, 1991 Woman of the Decade, Littleton Newspapers, 1970 Human Relations Award, B'nai B'rith Women, 1968 Distinguished Service Award, Littleton Education Association, 1968 Citizen of the Year, Omega Psi Phi fraternity, 1966

Books

Greenberg authored, co-authored, or edited nine books and over 200 papers. Her tenth book was published posthumously.